VERDI Otello Karajan DVD-VIDEO 0734040

. . . [the] essential Interpreter of Otello: Jon Vickers. There has always been intense debate over who was the greatest Otello of the twentieth century. But it's questionable whether any Otello has ever quite matched the harrowing intensity of Jon Vickers. In Roger Benamou's 1973 film of the opera, with Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, the Canadian tenor gives us a staggering study in torment that is Shakespearean in scale . . . time and again he works magic with the text. After the murder of Desdemona (Mirella Freni), as he sings of reaching his journey's end, he endows "Oh! Gloria!" with a depth of sorrow that is also ecstatic . . . [This "Otello"] remains one of the most emotionally naked characterizations committed to film.